


Marine Creatures

by glorious_spoon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Outsider, Rescue, Tentacles, Tentacletober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-11-23 04:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20886398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Magnus is a tentacle monster caught in a trap. Alec rescues him.(A series of interconnected one-shots for Tentacletober)





	1. Beached

**Author's Note:**

> Dude, I do not know. For Day 3 of Tentacletober: Injured Tentacles.

The midday sun beats down on him, a blinding, killing heat like he’s never felt. His skin cracking and dry, so horribly _dry_ that he feels like he might bleed. Like he’ll split apart and wither here, not a dozen yards from the water.

It might as well be twenty fathoms, though. The metal bites into his flesh, one hand and four of his tentacles caught in rusting teeth. The sand beneath him is caked and black with blood, but he isn’t bleeding anymore. He wishes that was a good thing. He can’t feel his fingers and the trapped tentacles are twitching involuntarily, coiling and uncoiling in their agony.

The worst of it is, he doesn’t even know if it was supposed to be a trap or if he’s just stumbled into yet another piece of human wreckage, tossed into the sea and forgotten about to wash up on this shore. The latter seems more likely; this beach has been deserted for as long as he’s been coming here. A fine place to sun himself and enjoy the exotic Dry, and now he’s going to die like this, trapped like a sea turtle in some rusting bit of debris. How humiliating.

Magnus closes his eyes against the killing sun, the gritty sand beneath him, and doesn’t think of Ragnor, of Cat—

Warm hands land on his arm. A warm voice, oddly dry without water to modulate it. Thin and cracking, like this strange world. “He’s hurt. Jace—”

“What the hell _is_ that?” Another human voice, more distant. 

Magnus flinches, and the human touching him pets his shoulder a little, awkward and soothing. “Shut up and help me. Hey.” It takes him a second to understand that the voice is talking to him now. He blinks his eyes open, membranes too cloudy to see much more than a dark smear against the hot blue sky, but the man’s voice sounds kind. “Hey. I don’t know if you can understand me, but we’re going to get you out of this. Okay?”

Magnus licks his lips. His tongue feels horribly dry. His gills are cracking, and the vestigial lungs were never meant to be used for this long. Much longer, and he would have suffocated. He still might. There’s no way he can speak, but he manages to nod. One tentacle--a smaller one--coils briefly around the man’s wrist, and he feels the slight, startled jump, but the man doesn’t try to pull away. He strokes a hand over it instead, and says, “Oh. Hi there.” There’s a smile in his voice.

“Jesus Christ,” says the other voice, and a shadow looms over him, briefly blocking the sun. “Alec, how do you want to do this?”

“We need to get him out first. Can you—” There’s a rusty creak, the sound of metal breaking, and then Alec adds, “Perfect. If you can brace it, I’ll try and pry them apart.” He pets the tentacle coiled around his wrist, then gently detangles it. “Sorry. I need my hand.”

From his tone, it’s clear that he doesn’t think Magnus can understand him, which is embarrassing. Magnus can’t imagine the sight he must make right now, sun-boiled and bleeding and crusted with sand. It seems like a strange thing to be worried about in the moment. Ragnor always said that his vanity would be his undoing. 

With an effort, he pulls the rest of his tentacles in toward his body, out of the way of the trap as the shadows shift above him, the two humans moving across the sand. There’s another scrape of rusted metal, a grunt of effort, and the biting metal slides loose with a sudden jolt of agony that would have Magnus screaming if he could make a sound. His tentacles recoil, wrapping around him, agony bleeding up the limbs, but he’s _free._

The hands land on his shoulders again. Alec’s hands, and then another pair, more tentative but still bracing. “We need to get him to the water.”

“How do you know?” asks the other man. Jace. “Pretty sure this wasn’t covered by any of your marine biology classes.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Alec says shortly, although that might just be because he’s practically carrying Magnus. His alien body lanky and strange against him, coated in rough cloth. “He has gills. He’s a marine creature.”

“Okay, but he’s also injured, so—”

“We’re not taking him back to the lab,” Alec snaps. “Not unless we have to.”

_The lab_, Magnus thinks, and there’s a strange and distant horror in that word but he has no time to think of it. The sand is growing wet beneath him, salt spray licking at his face, and then a wave washes over him and he slips into the water, feels salt sting across his parched gills, takes a breath for what feels like the first time in hours. His tentacles coil as another wave moves over him, and ribbons of dark blood drift up through the water as the sand washes from his wounds. It’s safe this close to the reef, but he’ll need to call Catarina before he goes back down to the Deep.

She’ll shout at him, but that’s alright. At least he’ll be alive for it, thanks to this pair of unexpectedly kind humans.

It’s that thought that has him breaking the surface of the water instead of diving back down to the safety of the depths. The two humans are still there. The light-haired one is a few steps back, wearing an expression of consternation, but the other one, the dark-haired one with warm hands and a kind voice, _Alec_, is standing in the shallows, water soaking the cloth around his lower limbs. His face splits into a smile when Magnus surfaces; with his membranes clear, he can see that the man is--lovely, actually. Unexpectedly so.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Magnus tells him, and he finds himself smiling at the way Alec starts at his voice. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Alec says, and wades out a few more paces, until the water laps at his hips. His bare chest is furred, his eyes a luminous shade of green-brown under the bright sun, and he’s staring at Magnus like—

Magnus dips his head beneath the water again, takes a breath, then surfaces. His tentacles are drifting toward the man, curious and affectionate, and he’s too tired and shocky to do anything other than bat at them with his good hand. “Stop that.”

“It’s okay,” Alec says, and he doesn’t even flinch when two slender tentacles wind up his arm and over his shoulder, prodding curiously at his gill-less neck. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m sure,” Magnus says, and pulls his tentacles back with an effort. He dips beneath the water again, then pauses. He’s not sure what it is that makes him surface again, to tip Alec a pale shadow of his usual flirtatious wink. “I’m Magnus, by the way.”

Another one of those startled, blinding smiles. “Alec.”

“I heard,” Magnus says, and smiles back.


	2. Overboard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Tentacletober day 4: Tentacles to the Rescue

The water closes over his head and Alec flails, kicks hard for the surface. He’s a strong swimmer, but that doesn’t matter with the chain wrapped around one ankle dragging him down. He grapples at it, but the metal is too tight, bruising against the bone, and his lungs are already burning. The water goes dark and cold as he sinks like—

Well. Like he has an anchor chained to one foot.

Panic breaks late, a sudden chill, or maybe that’s the freezing, crushing water. He’s so deep now that the world around him seems entirely black, and his last thought is distant echoing relief that Jace, at least, is safely back on shore.

The world around him seems to compress and fade. Water floods his lungs, aching and heavy.

For an instant, it seems that something is coiling around him, strong limbs with no joints, startlingly warm. A warm voice speaks in his ear. His name, maybe. He can’t make it out.

Then there’s nothing.

*

Sand beneath him. Wet sand grating across his back and thighs, cold water still licking at his feet for an instant before he’s dragged further up. His lungs feel like heavy stones, dark and cracking and he—

—_fades_—

—something warm and muscular coils around him, and then there are hands on his cheeks, lifting his chin, tilting. Warm hands, but there’s something odd about them, about the texture of the skin, or the placement of the joints, something—

“I’m very sorry about this,” says the voice above his head, “but I promise it’s for your own good. Do me a favor and don’t bite, okay?”

Something presses against his lips, slides past his teeth, expands to fill his mouth until he feels like he’s choking. There’s a pulse, then agony blows through his chest and throat and he’s gagging, coughing, his mouth suddenly clear. He rolls onto his side, coughing up what feels like a gallon of seawater. A hand settles on his shoulder, and something warm coils around his arm, slides up his back, soothing him as he shivers and retches into the hot sand.

Several somethings. Warm, boneless somethings that are definitely not arms or legs. He blinks sea water out of his eyes to see a man leaning over him, haloed in bright sunlight.

Not a man. He’s familiar, but he’s not a man.

He looks human at first glance, but the angles of his handsome face are slightly strange, eyes yellow and slit-pupiled, and there’s an odd flicker when he blinks, like there’s a second membrane beneath his eyelids. His muscular shoulders and chest are human enough, but where his hips and legs ought to be there’s a mass or purple-gold tentacles, ranging from slender threads to limbs as thick around as Alec’s thigh. Three—no, four of them are wrapped around Alec’s shoulders and arms, holding him upright and steady. The tip of one flicks against his ear, an affectionate, curious kind of gesture, and the man who isn’t a man says, ruefully, “We really have to stop meeting like this.”

“Magnus.” Alec’s voice feels like it’s scraping in his throat, and the man smiles suddenly. It’s bright and lovely even if his teeth do look sharper than teeth strictly ought to.

“You remember.” He sounds honestly delighted.

“Yeah, you were, uh. Memorable.” He tries to sit up, and the tentacles shift around him, lifting him effortlessly. There’s a bruised, unpleasant ache in his ankle when he moves, and he grimaces, glances down to see a ring of purplish bruises circling his ankle. His foot is swollen, and pain shoots up his leg when he tries to flex it. He winces and stops. “What happened?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Magnus says. He makes a graceful, flickering gesture with one hand, which is ringed with gold; several tentacles echo the movement and the ones still wrapped around Alec flex against his skin. It should feel incredibly weird, but instead he just feels—solid. Steady and protected. “Diving without gear and with a weight attached to your foot. Your species can’t breathe underwater, you know.”

“Yeah. Wasn’t exactly my idea.”

“No, I didn’t think it was.” Over Magnus’s shoulder, Alec can see the shadowy outline of the USNS _Herondale_ sketched lightly against the pinkening sky. It’s a cold strange jolt that goes through him at the sight of it, and Magnus glances at him. “Pirates?”

“What?” Alec says, and then, “No. No, there’s just…” he sighs, rubs the heel of his hand into his forehead. He’s had a very long day, and he’s just nearly drowned and been rescued by the very handsome tentacle monster that _he_ just rescued from a fish trap a week ago, so he thinks he can be forgiven in his thoughts are a little scattered at the moment. “My boss. Ex-boss, I guess, Aldertree, he’s… opportunistic. And I stumbled on some stuff I shouldn’t have seen and…”

“I see,” Magnus says. His tentacles twitch and coil, gleaming and strange. The one wrapped around Alec’s midsection has a pale divot in it, visibly reddened around the edges, which must be from the trap he pried Magnus out of. On this very beach, if he’s not mistaken, although they’ve got to be about a mile from where he first found a creature out of old sailor’s myths ensnared in a piece of utterly prosaic modern garbage. It’s strange, how quickly the tables have turned between them. Alec pats the tentacle gently, careful to avoid the healing injury, and the end of it coils immediately around his wrist. Magnus makes a face. “I’m so sorry. They like you, apparently.”

“No, it’s fine,” Alec says, as the tentacles start to loosen. Magnus pauses, and he finds himself blushing, for some reason. “I mean. I don’t mind.”

“Oh,” Magnus says, staring at him, but at least he stops trying to pull away. He clears his throat. “Well. I was going to take you back to your ship, but it sounds like that may not be the best idea under the circumstances.”

“Not so much.” Alec tries to heave himself up, but even with the tentacles steadying him he feels like he might topple over. Magnus rises as well; Alec can’t actually tell if there are legs in there at all, but he holds himself up to the height of a tall man, just a few inches shorter than Alec. “I need to get to the mainland.”

To Jace. To Jace and Izzy, and Director Herondale, and all the other people who need to know about this. Before Aldertree tries to toss anyone else off the boat with an anchor attached to their feet.

“You probably should be looked over by a doctor with more… experience with humans,” Magnus agrees, with a wary look at Alec’s bruised ankle. Broken ankle, he’s almost sure, from the jolt of pain that skitters up his leg when he tries to put weight on it. 

“Yeah.” He eyes the horizon. The mainland is more than a mile away. Alec could still swim it on a normal day, but this is definitely not a normal day. In more ways than one.

“I can take you,” Magnus offers. There’s something careful about his tone, something that Alec can’t read at all. “I do owe you, after all.”

“Pretty sure we’re even on that count.”

“If you say so.” Magnus moves closer. His tentacles coil up Alec’s arms. “It would be my pleasure, though. Honestly.”

The last thing Alec wants right now is to get back in the water. But Jace, Izzy—they need to know. And he thinks—

Magnus is still looking at him, still bracing him upright with a sturdy tentacle across his back, the smaller ones on his arms moving slightly, soothingly. And Alec thinks that this might be the scientific discovery of a lifetime and also that he doesn’t actually care about that part when Magnus is looking at him like that, when he’s holding him, steady and warm.

“Yeah,” he says finally, and Magnus’s cautious smile blooms into a sharp grin. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”


	3. The Bird and the Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Izzy starts to become suspicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for days 19 & 20 of Tentacletober: Protective Tentacles and Established Tentacle Relationship. Also, this came out significantly less cracky than I intended it to, but at least there are tentacle hickeys?

Izzy has been sleeping on the couch at Alec and Jace’s off-campus apartment for all of a week when she finally gives up on waiting for one of them to tell her what’s going on and corners Jace while he’s putting away groceries. Or at least, what passes for groceries for the two of them; all she knows is that there’s a frankly excessive amount of protein powder and cheap beer.

“So,” she says significantly, leaning against the fridge and folding her arms. Jace jumps slightly, then gives her a quick, nervous look that couldn’t be more suspicious if he was holding up a sign reading _SHADY BULLSHIT AHEAD_. That’s why she started with him, really. Alec is almost as stubborn as she is; Jace will fold like wet paper if you know where to push. Which she does. “Did you guys join a cult, or what?”

Jace blinks at her. “No.”

“Because you’ve both been really evasive since I got here.”

“We haven’t been evasive,” Jace says, evasively.

“Does this have anything to do with the _Herondale_?” She doesn’t even know the whole story there, other than the fact that about a dozen people ended up getting arrested, including Alec’s boss, and Alec spent three days in the hospital and was distinctly squirrely about the exact details of his near-drowning afterward. “You guys never really told me what happened.”

“Alec caught Aldertree’s smuggling ring, Aldertree had him thrown him overboard like the murdering fuckface that he is,” Jace says, and the anger in his voice, at least, is definitely real. Izzy can relate.

“And then he… what, swam to shore? With a broken ankle?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Oh, come on,” Izzy starts, but before she can pursue that line of questioning, the front door swings open to admit Alec himself, tousle-headed, sunburnt, and wearing wet swim trunks, dripping a trail of water across the worn linoleum floor as he kicks his sandals off and wanders toward the kitchen.

“Oh, thank god,” Jace says. “Here. Torment Alec instead of me, I need to go get ready for work.”

“Why are we tormenting Jace?” Alec asks. He smells like salt water and sweat when he leans past Izzy to grab a Powerade out of the fridge.

Izzy wrinkles her nose and ducks out from under his arm. “I’m not _tormenting _him, I was just asking about what happened with your shady boss—”

“Ex-boss.”

“Yeah, near-drowning is one hell of a pink slip,” Izzy says dryly, and pokes his chest where there’s an unmistakable double-row of reddish-purple hickeys showing up under the sunburn. “Nice body art, by the way. Did he have suckers?”

Alec turns bright red, which isn’t unexpected; Jace makes an appalled noise, which actually kind of is, and groans, “Jesus Christ, Alec, you weren’t seriously—”

“I’m gonna go shower,” Alec says quickly, and slips out of the kitchen like he’s been greased, hickeys and all.

“I have to get ready for _work_, asshole,” Jace yells after him as the bathroom door slams shut. He glances back at Izzy, mumbles, “So I’m gonna just—” then hooks his thumb over his shoulder and flees, leaving Izzy blinking and baffled in the kitchen.

*

Asking Alec about it goes about as well as interrogating a brick wall, which is more or less what she expected. Izzy has the good sense to stop before he actually storms off and they manage to pass a fairly pleasant evening bickering over terrible reality TV before Jace gets home just past midnight and yells at them both to go to bed.

That doesn’t mean that Izzy has forgotten about it, though.

The thing is, Alec and Jace have always kind of been a self-contained unit. They fight almost as much as they get along, but it’s still always been Alec-and-Jace, with little Izzy trailing along behind them. Never quite in on the jokes, never quite able to keep up.

She’s twenty years old now, with a college degree behind her and med school ahead; it shouldn’t still sting like this. Maybe it’s just that she’s lonely after things ended with Meliorn, maybe it’s that this will probably be the last summer the three of them get to spend together, but it all just feels like the end of an era. Also, there’s clearly a good chunk of the story that she hasn’t gotten, and Izzy is determined not to be left in the dark. Not this time.

Anyway, it passes the time. And it’s better than spending her summer sleeping in her childhood bed while Max is away at camp and her mom is up to her ears in her expanding business and all of her high school friends are off to bigger and better things. At least this way she can get out, swim in the ocean, harass her brothers and flirt with the cute redheaded girl who does cartoon sketches on the boardwalk for five bucks a pop.

She does one of Izzy, late one night after the shops have all closed down and mayflies are circling the tall lights, and it’s not one of the goofy cartoons she sells to the tourists but Izzy’s face sketched out in graceful confident lines, dark eyes and a soft expression that Izzy definitely doesn’t remember wearing, and the girl—Clary, her name is Clary—pushes it into her hands and refuses to take any payment and practically flees before Izzy can do anything else, like, say, ask her out to dinner.

She wanders home with the sketch clutched in her hand, feeling light and warm and unusually content with the world, not even thinking about Jace and Alec and whatever mysterious bullshit they’re definitely lying to her about.

So of course that’s when she crosses through the dunes on a shortcut back to the apartment and sees a tall familiar shadow slipping down toward the water.

It’s Alec. He’s in swim trunks again, barefoot and shirtless even though it’s starting to get cool at night as summer draws to a close. He has something in his hand but she can’t tell what it is. At the water’s edge, he kneels, silvery waves licking up over his feet and legs, reflecting the moonlight, and sets whatever it was he was carrying in the water. He sits back for a minute, then stands again and starts to wade out. A few yards out he must hit the drop off, because his head dips below the water for a moment before surfacing again, silhouette swaying rhythmically against the moonlit sky in a way that means he’s treading water. Izzy drifts closer without even meaning to.

A shadow moves beneath the waves, and then a man surfaces a few feet from Alec, all of a sudden, like he just emerged from the sea. A gleaming grin on his face reflects the moonlight, and from this distance, over the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, she can’t hear what they’re saying, but Alec’s voice is soft and low enough that she’s not surprised when he moves closer, leaning in to kiss the man with a comfortable sort of familiarity.

Just a late-night hookup, then. Izzy makes a face and starts to turn away before she can inadvertently witness any more of it, then pauses. Something is rippling, breaking the surface of the water. Several dark appendages that are definitely not arms twine up over Alec’s shoulders and into his hair, and instead of trying to escape he—turns, and presses a quick smiling kiss to one of them.

“What,” Izzy says out loud, “the _fuck._”

It comes out louder and shriller than she intends, splitting the fragile silence. Alec jerks, spins toward her, but the other man—he shoves Alec back with effortless force, spinning so that he’s between Izzy and Alec with the vast moonlit ocean spread out behind them. More of those things (_tentacles_, she thinks, slightly hysterical, those are tentacles, what the _fuck_) slip out of the water, making what would actually be a pretty menacing display if Alec wasn’t shoving at them exasperatedly, slipping under one of the tentacles and pushing it out of the way with a careless hand.

“Stop that, it’s just my sister,” he says, and then, “Izzy, what the hell are you doing here?”

“What am I doing? What are you doing? Who is that?” She almost says _What is that_, because the—man, or whatever he is, is staring at her from the water, his eyes an inhuman shade of yellow, reflecting the moonlight. There are long slits on the sides of his throat that ripple faintly as she watches. Gills.

And there are the tentacles. Several of them are still wrapped around Alec, who doesn’t seem bothered by it. He glances at his companion, then back at Izzy, then sighs.

“This is not how I was planning on telling you about all this, for the record,” he says wearily. “Izzy, Magnus Bane. Magnus, my sister, Isabelle.”

“The nosy one,” Magnus Bane says. There’s an odd lilt to his voice, not quite an accent; it’s more as if it’s reflecting against itself, a resonance that makes Izzy think of walesong, echoes in the deep. His smile gleams; his teeth are sharp. “I remember.”

“I’m not,” she starts, then snaps her mouth shut, flushing. The drawing that Clary gave her is starting to crumple in her fist, and she forces herself to relax before she can ruin it.

“That’s not how I put it,” Alec says, glancing at Izzy. “Curious. I said curious. Be nice.”

Magnus Bane surveys her for another moment, then sighs, relaxing. The tentacles coiled around Alec loosen. “All right. I’m sorry.” It’s half to her, half to Alec. “I haven’t had especially good luck with shore-dwellers lately. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Thanks,” Alec says dryly. “Neither have I, honestly.”

That near-drowning thing, Izzy realizes suddenly. Out loud, she says, “I was wondering how you survived that.”

“Yeah.” Alec glances at Magnus, who is watching him with a softness that makes her want to like him, suddenly. Even if he does seem like the exact kind of asshole that Alec would fall for, only in the shape of some quasi-mythical being. Or because of that, maybe. “I had a little help.”

“Oh,” Izzy says. She looks at Magnus, who is looking back at her, and the thing is—

The thing is, there are tentacles coiled around Alec’s shoulders and arms and Magnus has one hand out of the water and is resting it on Alec’s elbow, webbed fingers splayed. There is, absurdly, what looks like sparkly polish on his nails. This whole thing is so patently ridiculously unbelievable that she’s half-convinced that she’s hallucinating it. But the expression on his face is something close to anxious.

“Thank you,” she tells him seriously, and his grin is sudden and sharp and makes him look warmer all of a sudden.

“Entirely selfish, my dear.” He turns back toward Alec. One of the tentacles tenderly brushes Alec's wet hair out of his face, the gesture both deeply weird and casually sweet. “Perhaps you should… explain things.”

“I don’t want to stand you up if—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Magnus tells him, and there’s an undercurrent there that Izzy can’t read. “Talk to your sister. I trust your judgement. I’ll let Cat and Ragnor know.”

He lifts his chin to press another familiar kiss to Alec’s mouth, then just—slips away into the water, leaving barely a ripple behind him. Alec stays where he is for a long moment before turning and starting back toward the shore. He lets the tide carry him in, then straightens up in the shallows and wades the rest of the way back to flop on the wet sand next to her. Izzy stares down at him, and he gives her a look and pats the sand next to him. She sits.

“You were following me,” he says.

“You’ve been lying to me,” she counters, although that’s probably not completely fair. Alec sighs like it is, though.

“Yeah, well, would you have believed me if I told you the truth?”

“That you’re dating the Loch Ness monster? No, probably not.”

“We’re not, it’s not—” Alec shoves a hand through his hair and grimaces. “It’s complicated.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Izzy says, more sincerely than she really means to. She’s thinking suddenly of a scrap of near-forgotten lines from the drama club’s 10th grade production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’: _A bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?_

She’s pretty sure Joseph Stein didn’t mean it quite this literally, but it still applies. Alec’s profile looks thoughtful in the moonlight when she glances over at him, and Izzy hesitates, then settles a hand on his shoulder. She thinks about trying to say something supportive, but she knows from long experience how Alec tends to react to sympathy.

“So,” she says instead. Alec glances down at her warily, and Izzy finds herself grinning, which only makes him look more wary. “Tentacles, huh? How’s that work?”

It gets the reaction she was hoping for. Alec makes a strangled sort of noise and drops his face into his hands. “I am _not_ discussing that with you.”

“I’m just saying. You’re living the hentai dream.”

“I will drown you,” Alec mutters with no real ire, then scrubs his hands over his face and glances over at her. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“Yeah,” Izzy says. “_Obviously._”

“I mean it. Nobody. Not Mom, not Max, not your girlfriend—”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Sure.” Alec raises his eyebrows and nods at the paper still clutched in her hand. Her own face, lovingly rendered. There’s a signature at the bottom corner: _Clary Fairchild._ The first ‘i’ in ‘Fairchild’ is dotted with a heart.

There’s a phone number scribbled under it. She didn’t notice it before. Too distracted by Clary’s blushing face and rapid retreat, and then by Alec and his… whatever the hell all this is.

“Shut up.” She’s blushing. “Anyway, it’s not like anyone would believe me.”

“Doesn’t matter. Magnus and his people, what would happen to them if someone found out—” He breaks off, looking out toward the sea, toward wherever Magnus is. He doesn’t need to continue. Izzy isn’t stupid; she can read between the lines. She shivers a little, though it’s not that cold.

“Jace already knows.” It’s not a question.

Alec nods. “He was there with me, the first time we… met Magnus. It’s a long story.”

“Oh,” Izzy says. There’s not really anything else she can say. She moves closer to Alec, propping her shoulder against his and watching him spin the small metal thing that isn’t a phone around and around in his hand while the moon drifts higher in the sky and the waves wash in around them.

“You should call her,” Alec says eventually. “Your artist, I mean.”

Izzy looks up at him; from this angle his face is all but unreadable in the way that Alec often is, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess what he’s thinking. And even if it did, Izzy just so happens to be a genius.

“Yeah,” she says, and bumps his shoulder companionably. “Maybe I will.”


End file.
